


An Unrecorded History

by xpityx



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25292578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: Joe closed the book and dropped it none too carefully on the table. He would have liked to have thrown it away—to prevent anyone else from reading it—but it was far too easy to make copies of books in these times, so he knew it would be no use. He also could not quite bring himself to discard something as precious as a book, no matter how poorly written it was.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 48
Kudos: 908





	An Unrecorded History

**Author's Note:**

> Extremely un-beta'd! Possibly minus any sense, who knows.

Joe made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat as he read a book he had mistakenly thought would be an interesting, modern account of 12th Century England. The man who had written it seemed to think that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it simply wasn’t possible for England to have had a queer monarch. He was aware of Nicky, watching him from over the rim of his morning coffee, but didn’t want to share such a poor example of historical research with his lover, so he kept his annoyance to himself. 

Joe’s first sexual experience had been with a man from his tribe. He remembered almost nothing about the man except that he had been a few years older, and his beard had been soft against his cheek when they had kissed. 

The Christians hated women who lay with women so much they were forever writing laws to forbid it, long before Joe had been born. Not long after he and Nicky had come to terms with their immortality, Paris had been a haven for those who wished to love whomever they saw fit to. Nicky had fought alongside a man who had bound his breasts each morning, protected by his fellow knights who had sworn themselves to secrecy. There were more _ghazal_ poems dedicated to the love between men than there were for the love between a man and a woman. He had seen love in all its forms and never had he thought that, eight hundred years later, historians would still be arguing that Richard the Lionheart had never fucked another man. 

He closed the book and dropped it none too carefully on the table. He would have liked to have thrown it away—to prevent anyone else from reading it—but it was far too easy to make copies of books in these times, so he knew it would be no use. He also could not quite bring himself to discard something as precious as a book, no matter how poorly written it was.

“Do you ever wonder what they would say about us, if they knew?” Joe asked, knowing Nicky would be able to follow his line of thought. 

“They would say that you never understood how much washing up liquid to use,” Nicky replied, frowning at a plate he was holding in one hand, dishcloth in the other.

“I mean-” Joe continued, ignoring his lover’s complaint “-would they say we were friends? Brothers in arms? The way they have of so many that went before us?”

“We are friends.”

When Joe looked up he saw that Nicky, though not smiling, had the small creases in the corners of his eyes that told Joe he was teasing.

“You are very annoying,” Joe told him.

Nicky swilled the offending plate off, then started to work his way through washing the already perfectly clean plates and dishes from breakfast.

“But you love me.”

“I do, so much,” Joe told him, sincerely. He could never miss an opportunity to tell Nicky he loved him, to not tell him would be reprehensible. A far greater trespass than any sin men in their mosques, churches, or synagogues had thought up punishment for. 

Nicky smiled down at the soapy water.

“Is it important? Isn’t it enough that they loved?”

“If people have not heard of it then for them it does not exist, or then it becomes something secret and shameful,” Joe stated.

They shared a look of perfect understanding, 800 years of history passing between them in a moment. 

“I will write you poetry,” Joe decided.

“You already write me poetry.”

“I will write poetry about your cock, so they cannot mistake my meaning.”

Nicky laughed, his head thrown back and eyes almost impossible to see among his laugh lines. Joe turned at a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision to find Nile paused under the door lintel, a clear plate in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other.

“Do I even want to know?” she asked. 

“Possibly not,” Joe allowed.

“Didn’t Joe already wash up?” 

“Yes, but he hasn’t come to terms with the mass production of soap yet,” Nicky told her.

“It’s a waste to use so much,” Joe informed them both.

“See?”

“Thanks,” Nile said to Nicky as he took her plate off her. 

She sat at the kitchen table where Nicky had been sitting, the mismatched chair rocking a little on the uneven flagstones.

“Nile, did you learn about Benedetta Carlini at school? Or Hephaestion, who was a lover of Alexander the Great?” Joe asked.

“Nope, but I do know who Alexander the Great is. Was, I guess. Was Benedetta queer too then?”

“Yes, she was a nun in the 17th century and she was imprisoned for the sin of loving women.” 

“My brother is bi,” Nile replied and Nicky half turned from the sink, his hands still in the water. “He told me that, although it hurts sometimes that he doesn’t get to hear or see so much about people like him, he knows that there must have been people like him in history, looking forward and hoping for a future when they wouldn’t have to hide. He said it always makes him hold his head high. For them, for all those who went before him.” 

“He sounds like a wise man,” Joe told her, and Nile looked down at her hands for a moment, clasped tightly in her lap. 

“Yeah, he is.” She pushed herself back in the chair, her shoulders regaining the military straightness that she’d probably carry into the next century at least. “Anyway, how about ‘laughing stock’?” she suggested and Joe blinked, confused.

“Laughing stock?” Nicky asked.

“Yeah, heard you need some rhymes for ‘cock’.” 

Joe leant back in his chair, just in time to miss the handful of water that Nicky threw at Nile, who, grinning widely, ducked out of her chair and tackled Nicky to the ground. The book fell under the table in the following scuffle, where it soaked up the water Nicky had thrown. When Joe finally picked it up again, its words had warped beyond legibility: all its false history distorted. Joe smiled, and threw it in a perfect arc across the kitchen to land in the trash. 

  
  


_“When I am with him, smoking or talking quietly ahead, or whatever it may be, I see, beyond my own happiness, the intimacy, occasional_

_glimpses of the happiness of 1000s of others whose names I shall never hear, and know that there is a great unrecorded history.”_

\- E.M. Forster (1879-1970) about his Egyptian lover, Mohammed el-Adl.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> All hail [qqueenofhades](https://qqueenofhades.tumblr.com/), who [wrote about queer knights](https://qqueenofhades.tumblr.com/post/189889222489/i-want-to-hear-about-gay-knights-please).


End file.
